


Reciprocity

by raucousraven



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-05
Updated: 2012-07-05
Packaged: 2017-11-09 04:59:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/451570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raucousraven/pseuds/raucousraven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie doesn’t understand why no one’s thought to use it against them yet, because this pattern is not hard to isolate: Math all over Federal white boards, Don’s hand on his shoulder. Agents all over his office, Charlie’s  proportional increase in lab hours; Don’s spiking solve rates, Charlie’s documented consulting fees. Their last name. Sometimes, correlation really is causation but the Eppes brothers have been lucky till now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reciprocity

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to stillane, who started me thinking in this direction. Due blame/credit go to dsudis, who got me hooked on Numb3rs, and especially to qe2, who poked me till I started writing. 
> 
> Big Beta Ups go out to the lovely and amazing qe2 and the divine troyswann! We’re very grateful, the Monster and I.
> 
> There is a companion piece to this fic: [Nevada.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/456610)

Charlie doesn’t understand why no one’s thought to use it against them yet, because this pattern is not hard to isolate: Math all over Federal white boards, Don’s hand on his shoulder. Agents all over his office, Charlie’s proportional increase in lab hours; Don’s spiking solve rates, Charlie’s documented consulting fees. Their last name. Sometimes, correlation really is causation but the Eppes brothers have been lucky till now.

Stupid to depend on probability. Charlie remembers blood on his brother’s arm, the world falling backward as the shot whistled just past his head. _The gun panning slightly to his right, past his panicked eyes, down and to the side._ This is getting him nowhere.

And he’d only been out fifteen minutes after the call, down to see Larry and gotten involved in random matrices, and when he came back the SynTel file was gone. Charlie only noticed because it had been in one of the new 8.5x11 blue folders; they ruined the peaceable flow of manila-covered 11x14 folders covering his desk, and he didn’t like them. He’d been going to call Don but then Don had shown up holding a half-burned book and the whole Colombian consulate almost blew up in their faces. In the ensuing manic rush to keep Gabriel Ruiz alive he’d forgotten to tell Don about the missing file, and then suddenly his brother was also gone: Michigan, no notice; just one quick phone call at 6 AM on Thursday, and Charlie barely had time to ask.

“Does Dad know about this? And what do you mean, approximately Lansing? Doesn’t the Bureau need to give you time with your family before they ship you off into guns and motor oil and snow past your armpits?”

“Hey now. Don’t go confusing little Lansing with its big brother Detroit, okay?”

“Don.”

“Aw, c’mon Charlie. They just called me last night, okay, I have to pack, don’t make this any harder. Tell Dad it’s just for a few weeks, till the office there gets back on its feet. You know we took a rough hit over there last month.”

Charlie does know; he’d remember the footage, even without the small memorial at the Bureau’s front desk and Don gone stiff and silent for days, reviewing the tac manuals and quietly drilling his team’s responses. Four agents down and two still in hospital didn’t exactly make for settled work conditions, and Don’s had his team running on rails for awhile here. None of this actually justifies losing his brother on zero notice, but Don won’t listen to that. He has his mission voice on, all execute and go, and besides, Don is not slow. He called Charlie at 6 AM in order to avoid this very discussion. Charlie sighs helplessly.

“How long?”

“I told you.” Don’s voice has gone sharp, impatient. “Two months at most, didn’t I already say that?”

“Well now you have.” And there’s an edge to match his brother’s, but Charlie doesn’t want his last words angry. “I… Don? Did you just call yourself big, bad and full of diesel fumes?”

“Hey. Don’t make me come over there, Lansing.” Charlie can hear the grin. “Gotta go, okay buddy? Tell Dad to save me some beer. I promise I won’t freeze anything vital.”

Don hangs up. Charlie doesn’t. He stands in his ratty bathrobe as the day lights up the windows, listening to his brother leave.

*

The Tuesday after that, Charlie comes home to find his front room a mess and his father gone; the door is intact but unlocked, the chair’s a dead loss and there’s splintery dirt all over the rug. Don’s favorite lamp is smashed, and half the plants are spilled across the floor. His father’s work paraphernalia – cardboard tubes, finely sharpened pencils, a cell phone – are scattered haphazardly across the parquet. It’s 4 pm; they must have caught Alan coming home from a meeting.

Charlie knows a flood of Bureau agents answer his frantic call, but doesn’t know how he ends up sitting on Don’s desk at the office while Megan takes the letter ( _Don’t come after us_ ) apart molecule by motive with the forensics techs and David searches the house again for any clues left in the scuffle. The neighbors say they saw very little; a surgically clean strike, David calls it, shaking his head as he gets back in. Charlie feels his brow crimp further. Alan may not be a young man, but he’s not weak or easily cowed. _Possible correlation_ : It argues for something he dearly wishes to ignore. _Statistically significant?_ There’s no way to tell: _insufficient evidence. Proceed with caution._

There was no blood. But Charlie can think of more than one way to disable someone who’s not looking for a fight.

_The gun panning slightly to his right, past his panicked eyes, down and to the side at Joran’s desperate yell. Kuyber’s maddened snarl. The snake. Charlie leaps left._

They took the dirt for analysis, but Charlie already knows it’s TechSec. Colby’s horrified face when Charlie finally tells the team about the missing file is just confirmation, because the file had dealt in part with his analyses of the roundabout financing the SynTel frauds set up during their dual filching from the public purse. TechSec had worked for both the cautiously embezzling Galway Sr. and his thieving son; that should really have red-flagged them earlier than it did, but Mag Vorenky of Hamilton TechSec is a better accountant than even the SEC has guessed.

Not even Lucinda Shea’s careful accounting caught up to Mag and her brother Viti until near the end; then Lucinda’s murder disrupted futher investigations. Charlie has few illusions about why it’s Malcolm Galway and not Viti Vorenky sitting in an LA jail cell awaiting trial for that shooting. It would have been Mag’s brilliant idea, on par with her ruthlessly profitable accounting, to hide TechSec’s involvement in the SynTel frauds by duping the ambitious junior Galway into proving himself, again, making his hand the one that orphaned eleven year old Daniel Shea.

And Charlie had been going to give that file back to the SEC anyway, like a good boy, even before the phone rang. He'd gone to see Larry to calm down a little, after. The file hadn’t been on his desk until right then. It hadn’t stayed there long, either, and how long had they been tapping his office line?

_The gun panning slightly to his right, past his panicked eyes, down and to the side at Joran’s desperate yell. Kuyber’s maddened snarl twisting his sharp face, the snake tattoo flaring along a bicep, his knuckles red and white around the gun. Charlie leaps left._

And Charlie knows Don is supposed to be righting that office in Michigan, but no one’s seen or heard from him in days. Don should have called Alan Monday evening, like he did in Phoenix and Albuquerque. Should have checked in with the Bureau, even if he didn’t want to call home. David’s already called Terry and Kim to see if they’ve heard from Don, but keeps getting voicemail or passed along or put on hold.

The LA office keeps telling Charlie they’re on it. He notices they’re careful not to give him any actual data, especially not in hard copy.

Since LA doesn’t trust Charlie, it’s Colby going to Nadine and the LAPD and the DA and demanding answers now, dammit, until they find that several SynTel execs, who stayed around to prove their innocence while Galway Jr. awaited trial, have scattered to all points as of just this morning. Two are left in L.A., and Colby’s all for going out in force to nail those rich bastards right now. Charlie barely restrains himself from hauling Colby in by his lapels and screaming the man deaf. Attacking SynTel now would be a death sentence.

Alan has perhaps 36 hours before the last exec liquidates his holdings and gets out of the country. After that, Charlie’s analysis fails but his other training kicks in just fine. There are only a few ways to guarantee that Alan won’t talk. TechSec will probably take the easiest.

_The gun panning slightly to his right, past his panicked eyes, down and to the side at Joran’s desperate yell. Kuyber’s maddened snarl twisting his sharp face, the snake tattoo flaring along a bicep, his knuckles red and white around the gun. Sweat, fear, the smell of smoke; Charlie leaps left and dives into a roll, untucks only to see the snake writhe again as Kuyber brings his gun to bear._

Right before Charlie leaves the crowd of milling, concerned neighbours it’s Mrs. Lee, seventy-four and bird-tiny, who tilts her head and puts her hand on Charlie’s arm. She used to feed him crumbling almond cookies when he was small; for a moment he can smell them as she leans in and says, There was one man all yesterday, watching. Tall. Tattoo, red hat. He left when you come home. _What tattoo, Mrs. Lee?_ All wavy, maybe a snake. _Where?_ His arm. She points to her frail elbow, graphs sinx across her shoulder. _And the hat. Real red?_ No. Like dead blood. And Charlie flushes, feels his heartrate trip past panicked into terrified, fueled by a rage so high it’s threatening to take the top of his head right off, because the last time he’d seen Terence Kuyber the man had been shooting to kill. Had, in fact, barely missed.

Has probably practiced more than once in the three years since.

Charlie can’t think about Alan alone, can’t think about Alan alone with goddamn Kuyber, can’t fucking _think_. And Don is nowhere, and Charlie would like to be sick and pass out, but it’s Kuyber, and there’s no time. Promise me, Joran had said. Promise you will call me up. Joran’s voice echoes through Charlie’s mind, smooth and dry. As always. Charlie had curled shamelessly into the assurance of help, not caring that it was almost certainly far too generous. He’s still going to take it.

There’s a box in his mind, sealed shut over that particular data set: black gun, red dust, the snake tattoo and the red beret. The flare of hatred across the sheen of steel; a set of codes he strives not to recall. The box is where Joran’s phone number lives. Charlie closes his eyes and cracks the lid. The sequence unspools, effortless as numbers always are. It brings the grit-taste of hot wind and Nevada dust; Charlie feels his right hand clench around the nothing at his hip. The other Agent Eppes opens his eyes and slides quietly off his brother’s desk, slipping through the busy blue-lit halls, headed toward the greatest amount of noise he can find. Charlie unfolds David’s phone and wishes he believed in luck. Dials London. _Cat. It’s L.A. calling; game's back on. Veni nu, mi amiko._ He can't stop himself from adding: _Be careful._

*  
Charlie’s first time on the ranges had been fifteen inept minutes of fire-at-will; he’d felt the recoil travel all up his arm and jaw, metal slipping under his sweaty fingers, felt the gun misreading his demands and been unable to compensate. He’d been newly tenured, shiny-new to both gun ranges and high security clearance. the NSA had only recently informed him that his codebreaking contract would require “a specific training regimen, nothing fancy; three months in Nevada. Several other contract teams are doing the same.”

After the smoke cleared, their instructor had taken a quick stroll across their sad, sad targets, lip curling higher the farther he got. He’d picked up Charlie’s sheet and looked carefully at the scatter. Then Col. Awasi, CIA, USMC Ret’d., had clipped it to a board, glared at them all, and grimly gone over the faults in posture and focus likeliest to have caused each of Charlie’s awkward civilian misses. He’d stood by Charlie’s elbow through the next two rounds, snapping corrections as required; Charlie’s accuracy might even have improved if his nerves hadn’t just been blown to hell. His hands shook all the way through his first field-strip and cleaning, muzzle carefully pointed away and down. But as the others left for the mess hall, Awasi had turned to Charlie and said, far more quietly than he’d spoken yet, “The left hand, Dr. Eppes. It’s responsible for holding the right steady during a shot with this kind of pistol. For most guns, actually – remember that.” Charlie had been too shellshocked to even nod.

Later, a few other coders gathered to congratulate Charlie, laughing at his confusion – most civilians didn’t earn the honor of the Colonel’s personal slurs on their competence before the one-month mark. Charlie’s since read the rest of those first-summer notes himself. _Superior aim and concentration_ is written in Awasi’s square hand on his file, right next to the words _specialized training recommended_ , which got him sent back to Nevada next year. Charlie thinks of the other words after that, stamped and sealed for a clearance level far above his brother’s but well within his own: _Field training complete. Grade: operative. Note: marksmanship excellent. Note: reactivation suspended pending review._

It’s the biggest secret he has ever kept.

*

They’re approaching 0300h, asymptotic to some fresh new infinity and the L.A. Bureau is humming, processors whirring over the click of keys and terse agent voices fueled on fluorescent light, bad caffeine, pure adrenaline. Megan and David are tracking rich bastards and their big liquidations while simultaneously organizing the hunt for an FBI agent gone missing in the snow near Lansing. The office there got antsy Monday afternoon but hasn’t breath to spare to go looking for one misplaced agent somewhere between LA and Lansing. With David’s news, the state troopers are fanning across airports and highways, searching for evidence of conspiracy; by now they’ve found Don’s abandoned rental 4x4 and the tracks of another car, but the trail is two days cold and new snow is falling. David gives the troopers till dawn before he calls in the Feds, but he isn’t going to wait. Not for this. He hangs up firmly, and then gets up, headed for the tac room and its racks of guns and gear. Charlie watches him go, then murmurs _need a walk call me if_ to a distracted Megan, on the phone with DC. She nods, doesn’t look up. Charlie drifts after David, carefully nonchalant, but stops outside Interrogation 3 to watch Colby working at the top of his game.

Colby is grilling the DA’s human sacrifice (“God, Granger, take him and get _out_ ”), an informant close to Hamilton TechSec but nowhere near the top. At least, that’s the story so far. Colby’s been at it, enthusiastically, for the past four hours; he’s currently prowling the room, window to door to right in front of the spotty kid huddled in the uncomfortable plastic chair. The kid’s cracked once already, spilling details on drop locations and security schedules somewhere in hour three, but doesn’t know what Mag and Viti got planned, sir, he just did the small stuff, he swears. Colby twists low and fast, planting hands on desk and still coming; the kid jerks back, terrified.

He did confirm it was TechSec took the file. Doesn’t know how TechSec knew to come after Charlie. But Charlie knows; Mrs. Lee told him: _sinx_ =Terence Kuyber, a near-miss, a dead man. Blood arcing across the sky to splatter the rocks in Nevada. Megan doesn’t think these guys will move fast, but Charlie knows differently; he helped Lucinda Shea run those numbers the first time. He also knows exactly what happened to her. And while Kuyber’s arms rating and professional experience are off-limits to the Bureau under privacy acts, Charlie’s clearance got him all he needed. Charlie’s broken his own silence, telling the team about Kuyber, but Megan insists his profile doesn’t fit what Charlie’s saying. That’s because Charlie can’t tell them about Awasi’s notation on Kuyber’s files without getting them all kicked off their jobs. _Pathologically obsessive_ is only part of the problem. The other part is …complex.

David is suiting up in the tac room, loading up, arms easy and smooth in the familiar motions of menace and protection. Charlie watches him leave, then tries on boots until a pair fits and Kevlar vests until he finds one small enough. He leaves the D-rings on the bench and hopes Agent Thorne won’t mind him borrowing the spare. Charlie folds the vest underneath his own coat and slides back out into the blue light. The shoes go under Don’s desk, and no one is looking at his new boots as he gestures, again, to emphasize that the team call him with any new information. Something. Anything. Megan, abetted by David, sends two agents home with him. Charlie doesn't argue; it would raise more problems than he can currently solve. He half-dozes in the Bureau car as Wednesday dawns grey and unenthusiastic, trying to figure out how best to cover his ass at CalSci while he gets his father out of Mag Vorenky’s murderous hands.

*

Well of course he’s noticed that Charles isn't underfoot today; unlike some theoreticians he could name, Larry isn’t _blind_. But almost one year’s worth of experience has taught him to remain quite sanguine about such absences. After all, the precedents suggest that Charles is likely out gallivanting with Don, doing some exciting, tangential, Bureaulike thing. Larry is always quick to point out that such things usually end in missed seminars, late-night grading marathons and attempts to co-opt Larry’s TAs over the weekend. Again. That’s usually when Amita starts laughing at Charles’ increasingly hangdog expression.

All japery aside, Larry sometimes does consider asking for his lab back, for Charles' cases inevitably end up in, on or near his own blackboards and mainframes. Larry might even have considered genuine annoyance once or twice last term, running late for deadlines only to find FBI agents loitering in his hallways grinning at Kepler's _Farside_ pinups. He might even have given in to a little pique, were it not for the way this work has strengthened all of their capabilities, stretching their comprehensions faster than academia can take them. Larry smiles a little as he considers the fallout; all in all, it hasn’t been bad.

Working Don's cases brings out the very best in his brother’s brilliance, refining Charles’ theories to ever-greater precision as case after case exposes him to the realities of this beautiful, troubling, very imperfect world. The particular smile on Larry’s face in this moment is one Alan would understand best, as both his sons are rather young to comprehend the rare joy of having a protégé grow into a decent human being, even at the cost of great personal sorrow. Larry does not underestimate Don’s steadying role in Charles’ difficult maturation after the passing of Mrs. Eppes. For that gift, for Charles’ re-engagement into this present existence, Larry would willingly forgive far more than the coolly efficient men in suits and holsters lounging all over his office, even when they make him feel a trifle grubby around the equally efficient Agent Reeves.

Also … well, in Larry’s cosmology, anyone who laughs at the comic genius of Gary Larsen deserves a little lenience – even when that person is Colby Granger, who sees little beauty in mathematics and needs physics only to drive his car and fire a gun in the right direction. And, all right, stay attached to the earth’s surface instead of falling off into space-time, and Colby came up with that one all on his own. He’d been grinning then, too, and Larry is a little hazy on what makes a good FBI agent but he’s unwilling to bet inflexible stupidity is anywhere near the top of the list.

So yes, anyhow, Larry already knows Charles missed delivering his morning lectures, and that’s what he tells the Provost the first time he asks. Besides, Charles’ undergraduates have been coming to Larry all morning in lieu of their usual supply of Eppesian game shows, tilted eyebrows, and theoretical brilliance. It’s probably a natural result of Larry’s occasional through-the-door comments and frequent guest spots, and the times he’d sat in on that 300-level nonspecialist class. Well, Charles’ methods of explaining advanced math to fuzzy-headed biologists are interesting. Surprisingly, they also seem to work – not that Charles’ being effective is surprising – but, well, biologists aren't always the best logicians. Take that Wilkins, for example, treating Rosalind Franklin like dirt instead of lauding her to the skies for her groundbreaking work on the structure of DNA.

Actually, there are two students in this class who are quite intelligent mathematicians, and another one, a truly remarkable coder, who might turn out to be something more. Larry would be after all three to consider changing majors if he didn’t know they were part of the same research group, and properly dedicated to their own intricate and really quite fascinating work.

Dinoflagellates aside, Larry’s examples today have used few goats but rather more vintage cars; he thinks Charles would be pleased. This mood lasts until the Provost corners him and Dr. Lourdon late Wednesday afternoon, pinning them with questions because Professor Eppes has a) missed all his morning lectures, b) not yet administered or submitted his evaluations and c) not informed their office of any scheduled absences. Larry leads them to Charles' TAs, and sticks around to hear the scrimmage. It’s not till the Provost, the head of the math department and both TAs turn to him in bewilderment that Larry sees any dawning reasons for concern. Normally, Charles at least sends the TAs some sort of message, an awkward but sincerely apologetic note: _I’m really, really sorry, please tell the students by email, I’ll take your office hours on Monday to make up._ Now, standing just inside Charles’ office door, unnecessary key dangling from his hand, Dr. Larry Fleinhardt looks around and owns himself a trifle worried.

*

The NSA had required that first summer in Nevada when Charlie was put on their biggest high-clearance codebreaking case. The Agency upped the ante after the second successful attack, which had resulted in three civilian contractors dead and media hush-jobs left and right. And a new mandate: no one could break the assassination codes without knowing what to do if targeted by them; the NSA doesn’t want more contractor blood spilled violently on its anonymous bunker floors. So Charlie spent that second summer in Nevada’s breathless heat instead of presenting papers in air-conditioned auditoriums (Chicago, Pasadena, Mumbai; he missed the series on Wiles, and Ieng and Bruzhina’s influential talk on applications of combinatorics in neurochemistry, and had to pester details out of Larry for the next _year_ ).

Predictably, the theory of death is far easier than any theory of numbers. The main parameter is location: avoid shut-in canyons, walk-in freezers, unfamiliar food, large bodies of water. Stay away from all windows. Keep your backup informed, keep your backup armed. Carry at all times. During his year with the NSA he feels itchy if he’s out too long in the sun, or even standing in the middle of the quad. Open spaces make for an easy target. Stay low and to the side, or someone might see. It’s a life Charlie’s never once wanted.

Gabriel Ruiz, the target currently risking his life by choice in Colombia, is the only person who’s ever mistaken Charlie for an assassination specialist. It had struck Charlie as funny at the time, mainly because Ruiz was correct. They’d saved him, but it had been a near thing. Charlie doesn’t know if he can pull off a miracle like that without a full team behind him. He shakes his head, and because he’s standing in front of the bathroom mirror he actually sees his eyes come back into focus. His shirt’s off and the door’s locked, and why – oh. Charlie blinks, and contemplates the curls tumbling down to his nose. He’d let his hair grow out, after Nevada, blatantly unmilitary, then found he liked it longer. His father had nagged, whined, and eventually accepted it; Don, home briefly for the holidays, had grinned and attempted a noogie. Their mother had just laughed and handed Charlie some new hair-ties for New Year’s, all in serviceable black except for the big sparkly gold one.

Charlie picks up the scissors, watches his half-smile iron out to a grim line. He’d been meaning to go for a trim, but there never seemed to be time, what with returning midterms and revising finals and toning down the more fanciful musings in Larry’s latest paper. And Lucinda Shea’s orphaned son in his garage, professional assassins shooting from the trees, the NSA demanding he return files he has no business touching after walking out on Nevada.

Charlie had never thought to clear his involvement with Don’s work through the Agency. He’d never meant for things to blur, to get this entangled again in deaths per data-point. Most especially Charlie had never wanted to recalculate required calibers and lines of sight, all the ways to kill a man within a fifteen-foot radius of his own home. All the ways to make it look like an accident, every kill code indicating how long in the freezer (an evening to freeze over, about five hours to suffocate), how many floors up (7 is best, although 4 is enough), the heat of the fire (760 degrees centigrade for ash), time under water (10 minutes till cardiac arrest, 6 minutes more till brain death). But the CONDOR codes reappearing after 30 years meant the NSA was involved again, and Charlie could have seen this coming the second Don’s last name showed up anywhere near Awasi’s desk, except for how he didn’t.

It should have been Colby asking Gabriel Ruiz all those questions, David following Ruiz through his café, through his house, figuring out where to stand and what to avoid. And Charlie had known it at the time, also knows he needed that information – to see the assassin’s terrain himself, to run the numbers of strategy and defense one last time. To get someone else’s little brother out of trouble, even if just for a little while.

Then Don, running to Michigan at 6AM on a Thursday and vanishing into the snow. Now Alan, held hostage against his sons’ good behaviour. Charlie has no illusions about why they went after Alan and Don, and left him alone in the house. He wonders if Kuyber’s told Mag yet about how tragically hopeless Charlie is in the field.

But it’s desperate times. So scissors, snip, dark curls falling into the sink; Charlie runs a hand across his new-shorn head, considers various mourning customs and hopes it’s not any sort of omen. He takes a shower, jams an ancient Stockton Rangers cap on his shorn head, then unwraps the key from its tape-built nest in the chalk boxes and walks out to the garage. The two agents trailing him don’t look surprised, and stop obligingly at the door.

The NSA Codebreak Palace had been nothing like this comforting wilderness of cardboard, rattan and slightly musty chalk-covered slate. The NSA had provided him with a two-room temperature-controlled bunker at some carefully unspecified depth, bleached hospital smell seemingly soaked through its gray floors. It had had the blankest, most featureless walls Charlie had ever seen. Before Charlie’s Nevada trips, he doesn’t give much thought as to why; in the year between the first and second, working frantically through weekends, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Reading Break to prevent another killing before the codes mutate beyond his reach again, he knows it’s to facilitate the sweeps: the ones for bugs, the ones for bombs, the frequent ones for non-Agency cameras.

He’s realizing he never once asked himself what happened to the teams before him, why the NSA chose to train him, and him alone, to do the work of three. He’d always assumed it was because he was brilliant. He’s starting to wonder if it’s because he does what he’s told.

Once inside the garage Charlie checks the walls himself, looking for the glass-eye shine of a camera, then pulls back the planking hiding the small inner locker, takes out everything he finds and drapes it over all available surfaces. He runs a practiced hand over the gear, checking for rust, fraying, rips, holes. Unnecessary shiny bits. Charlie strips and cleans the gun, carefully, loading up in the gloom with the first of the clips he swiped from the Bureau. He tries not to notice how easily he remembered as he puts on two layers of gear he hasn't touched since the last summer in Nevada. His brother had been in Albuquerque, his father employed by the City, his mother still well enough to laugh with him on the phone and email pictures of the koi pond. His gloved hands slow on the silencer, remembering. There had been two babies that year, white and blue and gold; the smallest of them is now bigger than his hand. Charlie shrugs on Thorne’s spare over the heavy fire-retardant shirt, checks his range of motion. Winces at the stiffness of unused muscles. But everything still fits well enough, and he has a good vest to replace the battered one he’d left folded neatly on an upper bunk no longer his.

"Why can’t you plan in advance of your data? I know that you’re famous for your intuition in your own field. Why can’t it work in this field?" Awasi, eyes narrowed in frustration, Charlie in front of Awasi’s desk. The request between them (NSA: reassignment, internal) had been in triplicate, pink and yellow and white; light slanting off Awasi’s ridged knuckles, the frustrated curl of his hands. Charlie’s mouth had tightened in response. Awasi had grimaced and reached for the forms.

Charlie refuses to find out how many agents went missing, unaccounted for in the months that follow his unofficial resignation. How many good people vanish, in Kazakhstan and Belgrade and Key West and Rio, because the NSA can’t decode fast enough to warn them. He hates that he knows it was at least two, based on what the codes were when he left them. He hates that he may have trained with both that summer, that he may have waved hello, or been the one to teach them vectorial analysis. He hates that these unnamed lives cost him food and sleep, that he fears his dreams because of them. He knows they have frozen his hands in the middle of more than one upper-class combinatorics seminar, breath choked off, mouth dry. _What am I teaching these children to do?_

He stretches out, belts on the gun, then holsters and draws, again, again, faster, until he looks up and sees only trajectory and ricochet, until the shine of glass (camera, goggles) is a target to be taken down without thought. Conditions and possibilities of success write themselves across the familiar terrain: there, a good place to hide from cover fire; there, a great place to get shot from three different angles. Charlie takes off his glove, wraps his hand around bare steel. It’s no longer cold to his touch. He can hear himself one year ago, telling Edgerton that he doesn’t believe in guns, voice thin with fear for Don, for his students, for himself. And it had been true. It had been true, then.

Charlie shakes himself back into now, tugs various straps, checks flex and fastenings, then takes it all off, wraps his gun carefully and puts everything back in the duffel bag for transport to the house. He dusts off the lingering chalk and turns to leave, then turns back to scrawl one last message for Don on the cleared board:

_d/dx(n)=n^-1_

It’s not math. It’s reciprocity: inversion and upheaval, the world upside-down from what it seems to be. The derivation of normalcy upended. Charlie can only hope Don will understand.

*

In all his years Larry has never been able to see the bare surface of Charles' desk at this point in the term, let alone walk the perimeter of the bookcases without tripping over something. Last time, it had been the pachinko game; the time before that, a tome on the care and feeding of mice and two ominously empty cages. Today, Larry slips the unused key absently into a pocket and walks through the looking-glass.

His disbelieving eyes sweep the familiar room at a glance: all the books are shelved, and the overflow is stacked neatly in the corners; the disastrous pile of second-round undergraduate midterms has been carefully sorted into GRADE and DONE. The DONE stack is significantly higher. And that - well, that is definitely unusual, because Charles always gets the first round of midterms graded and returned within a week of collecting them, but leaves the second round till just before finals review. His reasoning is that he should be focusing on review prep and that the students who really care will ask; so far, that’s worked. Dr. Eppes’ students tend to do very well, unless they have no analytical acumen whatsoever, in which case even Charles Eppes cannot help them.

Larry returns his mind to the present reality, scanning the room for any hints. A loose thread, or a telltale leak – a place to start solving this puzzle. The blinds are straight, the sills are pristine, the plants are watered, the ant farm has new gel to eat and – wait. Larry stops his increasingly frantic cataloguing of impossibilities, feeling the frown deepen further into his brow. That’s Charles’ new work folder, flat and pinned beneath the GRADE pile. He usually keeps it well hidden behind two dusty volumes of Euclid he’s had since he was six; it’s a faded orange 11x14 with decrepit elastic bands, stuffed full of Post-its, notebooks, journals, reams of looseleaf and the odd envelope, and it contains the germ of his latest ideas. Larry’s never seen that folder not bursting at the seams. He scrambles around the desk, then stops as his brain catches up to his eyes.

Charles’ desk is a picture of meticulous order and his new work folder is empty; of course it’s a message, and Larry can feel his unease ratchet right into genuine concern. Larry has seen offices like this before, but usually only right before do-or-die presentations. Or That Meeting. Or, once, in preparation for chemotherapy, and Charles knows these stories because of course Larry’s talked about them. Told them many, many times, often enough that Charles jokes about how Larry must be in the pink of health to have such a chaotic workspace, symmetry or no symmetry.

This could be very bad.

Standing at the desk, Larry folds the slim sheaf of unmarked midterms over one arm and picks up that disquietingly empty folder. He lets it fall open, for lack of any other ideas. Larry can feel the worry tense across his eyes and tighten through his jaw; the sudden flash of blue startles him so badly he drops everything he's holding. The folder coasts to the ground amidst a flutter of hopeful proofs; Larry’s mind idiotically comments on Reynolds numbers and produces a friction constant. He freezes, heart picking up speed, remembering Charles’ carefree plane-folding grin and who – and what – had landed next at the door. Larry dives after the sprawled folder and comes up with a very small picture, clipped to the inside: Arizona, or Nevada perhaps? Somewhere hot and red. A mile-high sky, blue and hard; it’s tank-top weather, apparently. Charles has on one in grey, visible beneath the vest, and is laughing into the camera, tanned like mathematicians never are.

Larry remembers commenting on the tan; definitely not last year, and not the year before – that had been their Pasadena paper and Amita’s big presentation – but, yes, the year before that. Mumbai and Chicago, and yes, of course, that fascinating lecture series on Andrew Wiles he’d attended on Charles’ behalf. Charles had taken an unexpected sabbatical that year; unusual, in that he’d just taken one the previous summer, but not completely remarkable. Said sabbatical had certainly not slaked his intellectual thirst; Charles had demanded frequent emails throughout the conference season but declined to give any details of his own. Eventually, Larry had stopped pestering. Mostly.

An overdue vacation, Charles had finally said with a reluctant crimp to his mouth, standing slender and tanned in Larry’s office, more graceful in the August sun but also uncharacteristically tense. Three months of the outdoors – yes, like the year before, but definitely more adventurous. He’d handed Larry a shirt with little grey men in floral patterns and the words _Area 51 is for glxzthorps_ on the back, and asked something about modeling chemical pathways in the brain.

There had been a small shower of reddish dust on the desk as Charles pulled the shirt out of its little plastic bag; he’d wiped it off quickly, the tense, pained flush on his face totally at odds with either his usual lively curiosity or his livewire response to new stimuli. It was around then that Larry noticed how still Charles was standing.

Larry has a compendium of images stashed in his head, of Charles at faculty meetings, lunchtime seminars, even in the middle of a dissertation defence: fidgeting and gesturing, playing with his chalk or a random pen, restless and a little spastic; the remnants of his unused adolescence, perhaps. The energy of youth. Larry can still remember a wide-eyed Charles at his first conference, all of a puppyish sixteen and a half, alternately completely enthused or bored out of his mind, and pretty well always in motion. No hint of that spark had been visible in the man standing wearily by his desk, holding a vaguely silly shirt Larry would wear the next day. Larry had looked his dawning apprehension; Charles had rephrased his question, face and stance brooking no comment.

Obscurely dismayed, Larry had left the subject of Charles’ new frown lines and allowed himself to be guided into a stream of molecular formulae. By the time they'd placed their orders, the conversation had segued into a protracted discussion about whether subatomic physics properly belonged to the realm of logic or the aforementioned little grey men. Those worrisome lines had smoothed out completely over lemon meringue, which Charles ate like he was dying without it, and he'd recovered at least a partial dynamism by the end of his second slice.

When Larry next saw those harsh lines on Charles' face, they had been about Mrs. Eppes, and any questions he might have had then stayed bitter in his mouth.

Sitting at Charles' desk, the little photo in his hands, Larry has a dim memory of the paper plane landing at Don’s feet as he blew through that very door holding a burnt book in his ash-smeared hand. Larry is clearer on Megan's grim eyes and carefully neutral mouth; he distinctly remembers Charles looking down at the blackened page, brows drawn in concentration, Don dark and quiet by his side. Larry's lost count of how many times he's seen it in the last year: the two dark heads, one a tousled tumble and the other short and clipped, bent over a single problem. Then Charles had raised his head, and this Larry wants to forget: there had been no trace of the expected vagueness in those bleak eyes. Larry feels a frisson of disquiet prickle up his spine at the memory of Charles' entire expression flashing still and cold, harsh in a way mere code didn't warrant, just before he'd said something about assassinations and the CIA. Larry slumps back further into the chair, the smell of ash strong in memory, the events of three summers ago rearranging themselves in his mind.

*

Gabriel Ruiz, Lucinda Shea, Terence Kuyber, the NSA. Charlie at 20, marveling at Don’s new badge. Charlie at 8, dazzled by vectorial addition. Those moments have led directly to this one, straight lines with no deviation, to Awasi’s voice out of the blue after three years, gravel and dust on his phone at CalSci. Charlie had felt his past and present as a queasy collision somewhere midchest and had had to sit down before he fell over.

It shouldn’t have felt so much like a betrayal when Awasi had asked when he’d be coming back to finish his work. He’d known it was coming, but still. Goddamn. Charlie cut Awasi off in the middle of a lyrical description of the Colorado joint military project and hung up, slamming the phone just a little. He had stared at the placid blue folder, mind looping through his analyses as he tried to choke back his temper.

Then fifteen minutes only, out to Larry’s to calm down; Charlie had a class that afternoon and couldn’t afford to be guilty and infuriated. He’d come back and the file had been gone; one more point on the line. In a few hours Don would blow through the door with a half-burnt book, a question and a set of codes Charlie sometimes sees when the dreams get really bad. Charlie had never planned to be kitted up and moving out again, gun ready, lines of subtle confusion and attack spinning again through his mind. He’d moved on; these circumstances were never supposed to find him again. _Luck be a Lady my ass._

Charlie sheds the agents at the house with a number and extension to call, just in case, while he supposedly heads back to campus. He and Joran are parked not quite two blocks from TechSec’s back entrance in the middle of a grey Wednesday afternoon, Joran fiddling with the scans, Charlie tense and kitted out beside him, adjusting resolution. At CalSci that morning, Charlie’s email had turned up a nonsense string containing a set of coordinates and a colour in binary, apparently sent at 3 AM; when he got up from lunch to check the street again there was an unfamiliar dusty green van half a block down and Joran draped over a deckchair on Dr. Edelstein’s porch reading back issues of _OK!_. They have run this scenario enough times to know how it works; Joran doesn’t even twitch as Charlie walks past and flashes three fingers. The green van pulls up behind him three blocks later, between a coffee shop and the laundromat.

Sidi Joran is a handsome bastard who knows his way around sex and surveillance, and Charlie really, really doesn’t want to know how he got from London to L.A. in less than 17 hours. Suffice to say: it’s likely MI-5 has temporarily lost track of its best Brixton snoop. Charlie is hoping they can both stay lost for at least a few more hours. By then, either his father will be safe or they’ll need all the help they can get.

The rig is set; Charlie is leaning over Joran’s shoulder, watching EM fields and heat signatures glow like ghosts on the screens. The elaborate security system isn’t on, or the building would have lit up their scan like fireflies – and set off the FBI’s like Rudolph and Kwanzaa combined. Joran’s jury-rigged van Eck phreak was able to confirm that much, but he can’t do more till Charlie’s inside. They’ve chosen a much higher frequency for their own communication; it’s not perfect or perfectly safe, but they’re out of time and resources for anything fancier.

So Charlie checks the silencer one last time and takes a deep breath. Slips out the back of the van, engages the three-step approach that will get him unnoticed into the service corridor of Hamilton Technological Securities Inc.’s big glass-fronted vanity address. The real offices are on the third, fifth and sixth floors because Mag isn’t stupid enough to centralize; that shivering kid had told Colby the first part, eventually. Charlie figured the second part himself. There’s Kevlar poking at his chin, extra clips on his belt, an earpiece snug against the curve of his head; Charlie waits out the perimeter sweeps while crouched in shadow, counting time while Joran drops the van back another two blocks. Four and four, pistols only, sweeping left, right, left, average of about eight minutes per circuit. They’re very tight but not overlapping, which means whoever’s running TechSec’s perimeter is not too worried. Professional, he thinks coolly, waits for Joran’s _go_ and moves in as the left sweep disappears around the corner.

The door’s quiet hydraulic hiss can’t be helped, but Charlie puts a piece of foam into the jamb to prevent the giveaway click. Just as he was taught. The gun (his gun, earned, _paid for_ ) hangs in his grasp, balanced and deadly. It’s been years but he still remembers how to hold one, how to carry like the pistol’s part of his hand. In the years he’d worked for the NSA, it had been. Charlie tries to be grateful to the Agency for this training, for the merciless pressure that taught him hyperawareness, for the constant fear sapping him down to rage and bone. Red dust. He can’t quite manage it.

Joran’s quiet voice is a familiar rasp in his awareness, directing Charlie according to the faint EM scans on expertly jury-rigged screens lighting the interior of a rental van some office near LAX will never get back now. Of course, the rental company will be paid; Joran’s no amateur. They’ll just never see the van again. Charlie is headed for the back stairs and its bad camera angles, but he checks briefly into that fancy glass atrium to make sure the elevator stops at floor 8 and stays there.

Charlie oils the next door open, quiet and quick, and heads up the back way to the third floor; it’s Mag’s office, the kid said, and the place all Joran’s heat sources are showing up. Not hot enough, though; that’d be the vests. Awasi had made them all learn those faded heat signatures quickly. Charlie’s borrowed boots barely sound against the worn gray linoleum. There are advantages to being small and _light enough to ballast a cat_ , as Joran had pointed out that first uncomfortably warm afternoon, both of them sent alone from their teams, standing awkwardly in the blistering stripes of red-rock sun. Charlie had, perforce, taken the top bunk as the chatter of forty-eight other people setting up and shaking hands and sorting out drawer space hummed around them in six or maybe eight different languages. Makoto Taniyama and his teammate Kevin Coombs were next to them, switching into English for a round of hellos, then Dan Lung and Lorimer Bok: Kyoto, Brisbane, and Bok was from Montreal by way of Johannesburg. Charlie had wished out loud for a babelfish, drawing a few amused stares from the Brits and a surprised laugh from his lanky bunkmate. They’d called each other Dr. Maths and Communications Specialist Joran until they discovered their mutual addiction to Red Dwarf, after which they were Holly and Cat.

Matt Islington and Terence Kuyber, Ithaca, had been diagonally across from them. Charlie hadn’t noticed much beyond Kuyber’s height and Islington’s buzzcut.

Joran is the only contact Charlie kept from either of his agency-sponsored summers; they send each other links to things like Mathra, Superhero Physics, and fraudulent ads for caffeinated Cialis. Personal updates are rare, but they’re always signed via amiko. Charlie still hangs onto the wistful Listerian dream that someday everyone will speak Esperanto and all grammar rules will make sense. It hasn’t happened yet.

*

Zbigniew Ollnytzkiej was the kind of teacher students prayed for and then cursed as they struggled through diabolical problem sets at 4AM in the CompSci labs. That second year in Nevada he taught them strategy, or Survival of the Least Stupid, and refused to either shorten his first name or help them pronounce his last. He’d been a spy – “operative, operative,” he always corrected them – during the Cold War, but had defected when it became clear that the Communist Bloc wasn’t going to change its stance on disappearing political dissidents any time soon. The afternoon of the first day, he’d had them decide on the best five ways to approach a motorcade for the purposes of assassination. He’d held up the most ludicrous examples, then told them off about the fifteen different things they could have considered instead of getting themselves blown away by security in the first five minutes. Then he’d criticized their IQs, good looks, and parentage, and sent them off in pairs to do it all over again, properly, while he touched lighter to cigarette and read what Charlie guessed were their Agency files from the previous year. When Zbigniew had looked up he’d brought Charlie to the board to explain vector analyses on bullet trajectories and why they should care. This, Charlie could handle, and it wasn’t long before he had the class acting out vector addition and miming spin from the corners of the room. Zbigniew had smoked and smiled almost benevolently, as Islington looked skeptical and Kuyber’s frown deepened into a scowl. “No idea what died up his bum, you were great,” Bok had grinned when Charlie asked.

All that week, Zbigniew had them pore over famous assassinations in Syria, in Panama, and of course in Dallas, TX, analyzing speed of execution against waste of resources, mapping sniper locations against best lines of sight, calculating ratios of blast to bombs to cost. Make lists of the most efficient ways to assassinate by force, by stealth, by seeming accident, classify each attack’s level of difficulty, the risk to the perpetrator, and chances of success, all in neat grids. Then he required his students find effective defenses against each method of attack, based on what had worked in the past, drilling them in proper response until Charlie woke one night to hear Joran muttering attack and response codes in his sleep. They had progressed from diagrams to simulations to physically acting out scenarios of attack and defense, and it was by far Charlie’s favorite class until Zbigniew announced the pop quizzes.

Not paper-based. No, Zbigniew Ollnytzkiej was a _good_ teacher, and his quizzes consisted of one daily unarmed attack on a randomly chosen group of trainees by an unknown assailant, one Operative Z. Three days later it switched to attacks on random pairs. It was bruising, terrifying, demoralizing, and the debriefs next day were painfully humiliating. Kevin Coombs finally cracked near the end of day six, speaking for at least half the class when he cussed Ollnytskiej out for treating them like raw recruits. Zbigniew’s response had been typical.

“Ah, technician. You think death will temper itself for you because you are not a military man? Be easy to dodge, be sweet when it comes? I say to you this: it will not. And the simplest way to temper death is to avoid it entirely. So learn, damn you. Be fast, be smart, and do not shame me by dying for some idiotic reason like _forgetting to duck_ , Mr. Coombs.” Charlie had flinched away from the glint in Zbigniew’s eye.

“Dr. Taniyama, see that he learns. By force if you have to, if you value him enough.” Zbigniew had grinned at them all, unnervingly fierce, and upped the ante to random attacks on lone walkers as well. Still unarmed, although now the operative could approach from all sides.

Life reorganized itself along new axes, keeping pace uneasily with their small arms practice and the classes on ballistics, on open conflict, on stealth. Easy: never be alone. Hard: sometimes you couldn’t protect each other and survive. The stakes in the quizzes rose from fighting unarmed to requiring the use of one implement to having to fight back with whatever was in the room; Joran took a few hits for Charlie until Charlie learned to keep his head down and reject engagement in favor of throwing the nearest heavy implement and running for it, since he couldn’t go for the guns no one was wearing yet.

But slowly, his reflexes improved until Charlie started to think he might actually survive the next month. Then Zbigniew horrified him all over again by announcing that teams would begin planning quizzes for each other, and not only that. Now, for the first time: guns. And paint, paint only, but everyone was to wear tac vests, and the pants and boots to go with them. And get used to carrying at all times, and go next for the gun but first for cover, even if these bullets merely left smears of green or blue across the CIA’s on-loan Kevlar. Charlie swallowed around the rising nausea, picturing twenty-four days of sheer tactical hell, and looked nervously from Coombs’ shaking fingers and Lung’s grim mouth to Joran’s still-serene face. Kuyber’s eyes had lit so fast they’d practically started to glow.

*

Joran’s voice moves Charlie up two floors and across a waste of hurriedly overturned workstations. The second floor is a shambles of melted plastic, shredded paper and ash; clearly Mag and Viti had been in a hurry to clean out their files. He starts to wonder why their team of thugs thought the huge building secure enough to hold a hostage before catching himself; he cannot afford to think of his father now. Alan uncharacteristically pale, face scared into stillness; long hands tied tight, soft mouth efficiently gagged beneath his terrified dark eyes. That terror partly for Don and mainly for Charlie, always for Charlie – _Stop_. Full stop. They’d found no blood at the house, but that meant nothing. Rage and fear combine like a noose; Charlie stumbles, gasping for air. Tries again, can’t find any.

“Hey now, stop that, Holly, you can’t – it’s that complete arse Kuyber, couldn’t see his face before – you still with me? Hols. _Charlie_. In through the nose… You were right, can’t believe it,” mutters Joran. “He just walked in the front door, open as you please. Watch it in there.”

_I knew you were too soft for this. Academics, good God._ Charlie shies away from the memory of Terence Kuyber’s curled lip, coughing on his knees, blood in his mouth, sparks of pain whirling from his stomach to his head. In his ear (in the now) Joran’s voice is far too concerned. Charlie shakes his head hard, evens out his breath. Checks again for cameras. No time for this. It’s gotten him in trouble before. He gives Joran a personal all-clear neither of them buys and starts moving again, headed dizzily for the first of two sets of stairs to the third floor.

*

He thought he'd just imagined it, that unfamiliar chill in Charles' familiar eyes, imputed some icy alienation into the angle of the sun and the glare off the desk. But now, staring at the little photo in his hand, Larry has to admit he's no longer certain. He's no longer certain of anything Charles' eyes may or may not have seen, and that is genuinely painful to know. For a moment, Larry is close to tears, but he does not indulge himself. He had once told Charles they all had the same number of minutes but this photo could make time a precious relativity indeed.

In retrospect, letting Charles evade this issue may have been less than wise. That his office looks as it does means he’s reasonably sure his chances of returning aren’t high. Charles being Charles, that deduction would be founded on solid calculation. Larry can recall nothing in the last 24 hours that could have brought his erstwhile student to such dire circumstances. He searches his mind for a disaster sufficient to empty this folder, something that could stop the mind of Charles Eppes, and draws a complete blank. And now he is truly, genuinely afraid.

Larry looks again at the image in the picture, noting the presence of tension singing through Charles' stance, even etched into his seemingly carefree smile. Little grey men; red dust: Nevada, then. Neither of these things explain the muscle groups he didn’t even know Charles had. Or the boots, or the heavy vest, or the gun on the belt slung carelessly around his waist, small and black and probably not for show. Charles' right hand drifts just above it, index finger not quite touching its grip. Larry’s seen vests like that before, mainly in movies before the last twelve months made them an increasingly large part of his weekly realities.

Larry flips the photo; _For the smegging smart smegger_ is written in someone else’s lolloping hand across the back. He gets the reference, but doesn't recognize the writing. At this point, it’s just one more thing he doesn’t know. How had Charles phrased it? _I have a friend at the NSA who knows someone from the CIA..._

Larry has honestly never feared for his best student like this: not during the whole Penfield debacle, not when Amita finally walked to Astrophysics and didn’t come back, not the afternoons Charles spent staring at the same page in his texts while several blocks away Don and Alan kept an increasingly difficult vigil.

Not even during P vs. NP. No, not even then, because then, Charles had still been working.

And Larry may sometimes seem like he’s not paying attention, but he knows that the sum of Charles Eppes’ perfect desk and what was apparently a quasimilitary training camp in the Nevada desert gets him an arrow pointing directly to the FBI. Larry salvages the GRADE pile, takes the photo with him, and goes looking for Megan, but not before carefully replacing the empty folder behind the Euclid, where Amita would find it, should she care to look.

*

Charlie isn’t good at tactics; he can’t seem to keep his mind pinned down to the field. In the heat, there are far too many parameters to calculate at once and there’s always something he misses. Charlie is, however, the best strategist in his class. That second summer in Nevada he shows his whole class how to run the numbers, variances describing each trainee’s most likely actions based on previous actions, appropriate responses based on which team is attacking, available firepower, the terrain underfoot. The math streaming through his head means writing off the napkins onto the table before Coombs can get him more, standing Kuyber’s increasingly bad-tempered interjections (“This is fucking useless. What about applications?”), waking repeatedly past 0200 to jot down one last application for the class next day. Ollnytskiej nods approvingly from the back of the room while Awasi despairs over his erratic, abysmal performances in the field.

It all comes to a head after Kuyber’s vicious takedown, the one that leaves Dan Lung swearing helplessly over the bruises spreading up Charlie’s torso and across his shoulder, the cuts in his mouth that leave him unable to eat. Taniyama watches him put down his fork with, he swears, the exact same look Don used to get, while Bok gruffly shoves the mashed potatoes his way and Joran goes to fetch more milk like Charlie’s twelve years old. They’re all a little terrified for him now; tomorrow the real thing begins, what Zbigniew ’s been training them toward all summer: the games, with the vests and the paintball and everybody on the offensive, everywhere, all the time. The final month: _let the games begin._

Charlie’s been assigned to this team, a small mercy on somebody’s part. He has no idea why he can’t stop letting them all down. Or he wouldn’t, except that Zbiegniw told him that afternoon.

“You must see what is, Professor. Not what might be, or what will be, or even what you want to have be. That is most dangerous of all.” It’s Zbigniew ’s voice, unaccountably quiet in his memory. Charlie’s still shaking in the dust, retching from the last hit to the stomach, Kuyber’s voice hissing in his ear. “What _is_ , Dr. Eppes, or you will die.” Zbigniew sits down, lights up a contemplative cigarette. They sit in silence for a moment, shrouded in rock; the gully Charlie got trapped in is bone-dry in the summer heat. Charlie feels the sweat drying off his body, runnelling down the back of his neck. His shoulder hurts, where he blocked the second punch and took the fifth, but his stomach definitely hurts more. Charlie can see the entire conflict in strobes, can track exactly where he lost his head, but can’t see how to prevent the fear. He’d had Don in high school, sort of, thoroughly embarrassed but determined to keep the bullies at bay. At Princeton his mother had quietly terrorized the entire Admin staff into watching out for him; the department had already closed ranks around him. Then CalSci and Larry had taken him in. Charlie has no idea how to save himself; he’s never had to do it before.

“If you cannot learn this for yourself, then learn it for your team, Professor. You have the leader’s gift of inspiring loyalty; they fight for you without being asked. You are not dumb. You know this.” Charlie turns his head toward the heat-hazed blur that is Coombs at the mouth of the gully, holding gauze to the blood running down his lip, sees Joran limping off to get his ribs taped up again. Knows his wily instructor is correct. Can’t think what to do. He also knows Zbigniew can see it as he pulls Charlie off the dusty rock, and realizes the man is just waiting to be asked. He’s been waiting for weeks, and since Charlie can’t figure it out, has finally come to him. One last act of mercy before Zbigniew looses the dogs tomorrow.

Charlie is not dumb. He asks. “They’re stronger, they’re faster – it’s always been that way. And I’ve always been scared of them.” No shame in admitting truth, not now. “How do I win against that?”

Zbigniew ’s answer, when it comes, is still quiet. But that whetstone edge is back, a fine-grade lash across Charlie’s awareness, stinging him out of stillness. “You do not. So you shift parameters, Dr. Eppes. You must change the field to the places where you are better than they.”

It’s like Euclid, Charlie realises somewhere in the shitstorm of the following weeks, in the whirlwind of constant evasion and near-blinding fear and Kuyber, always Kuyber, out to take him down as hard and fast and public as possible. Tactics are proofs: if you do it right, then you dictate the terms and the enemy has to follow them. And they fall in line, into your line of fire: _AB=CD_ , law of telling your ass what to do. _QED_. Charlie stops frantically projecting what Don would do with the same parameters and spends another afternoon with Zbigniew, the only safe-zone besides the bunks between 0100 and 0500. That discussion is what leads him to those bunks while the rest of the camp is off listening to two Marine officers and one bland-faced man in a suit discussing competitive strategizing in unknown terrain. Charlie is hunting. He finds what he’s looking for attached to the underside of Islington’s bunk and is thankful he thought to wear the heavy gloves when his careful hands encounter sharpened steel. Charlie removes the blade and unfolds and unfolds and unfolds until he’s holding a map, a slim book and a small bag. He spreads everything out on the floor and blinks in disbelief.

Charlie is looking down at a perfect map of camp, inked across pencil. He runs one light finger above the neat lines and angles delineating Kuyber’s stratagems. Each target is followed by an almost idle line of stats: scores, wins, number of hits, range of accuracy. _P(kill)_ = anywhere from 0.19 to 0.87, calculated from the above and run through at least two error analyses each. By hand. And the map is drawn precisely to scale.

Numb around a growing horror, Charlie shifts his gaze down and left and suddenly can’t breathe. Kuyber’s really not another musclehead, no matter how many pounds he benches one-handed or how short he cuts his hair. Ithaca… Cornell. _Shit._ Because those are equations covering the bottom left corner: what Charlie was explaining to Joran yesterday on break. Kuyber had slapped hands over ears in protest, then (since neither of them stopped; Joran isn’t exactly fond of Kuyber either) walked away, muttering loudly about the useless waste of carbon in the back bunk.

Now Charlie stares at the map, swept out somewhere between terror and wonder. _Not a failed Marine after all_. The equations in the bottom left form a proof, a beautiful linked set Charlie had first published at 16; they’re almost perfect, but Charlie picks out the two small flaws that leave the final line a frustrated blank. There are others, in neat, almost indiscernible groupings around the margins; everything from classical Newtonian derivatives to Diophantines to Wiles’ most recent work on Fermat. It’s everything Charlie’s been babbling about to Joran, during breaks or after Larry’s emails, even some of the more obscure calculations Charlie had toyed with on their last free day, humming and clicking his pen in the empty room, ripping pages out to tape them up around the bunks, the walls, the ceiling. He’d been lulled by the rhythms of a totally different kind of setup and attack, unguarded for once in this benighted place. Lost within his work. Hadn’t noticed he was being watched.

Charlie skates his eyes down the smooth grouped lines of letters and numbers. A few are completed ( _QED_ in a businesslike black), but most are either broken off or wrong. He doesn’t need to check the book to know he’d find the same. Charlie tries to imagine what it would be like to lust after numbers enough to learn the theory but not be good enough to finish the thought. He recalls Kuyber’s snarl, pure jealous truth, looks again at the fine-point black pen and carefully sharpened pencils in the little bag. His held breath puffs out, the pain much worse than a punch to the stomach as he tries to imagine that life. Sick with pity, Charlie has to look away. It’s how he notices the shadow by the door. _Shit. Oh shit._

Charlie finishes setting the last of Joran’s specials down on the other side of the door closest to the guards. He lets out his breath ( _gently, they’ll hear you_ ) and legs it, down and across and up again, for the other set of stairs. Once there he hunkers down and gives the ok.

“ _Kiam me kalculos al tri_ , Hols.” Joran’s voice threads his ear. Charlie counts off three sets of ten pulses, keeps track of the footsteps on the other side of the door. Three, possibly four, another man on guard, plus his father who likely can’t move; everybody else will be off taking data and hard cash as far as their private jets can carry them. Charlie hears a woman’s sharp voice, a restive step, and realises he’s breathing far, far too fast. His headset crackles on.

“GET OUT.” In memory, Kuyber’s voice cracks across the long room, harsh with rage. Charlie doesn’t dare look up as he leaves. The next day everything goes to hell.

_Tri_ , breathes Joran. _God_ , Charlie prays. The doors on the opposite side of the room go up in spectacular flames; there’s a yelp, running steps, shots fired away from him. That’s four bullets they’ll never get back, but those didn’t sound like pistols. Charlie counts, knows the smoke is wreathing the door closest to the guards and billowing out across the room. He uses the file to pry open the other door a bare half-inch.

*

It had been yet another iteration of the games; they were up to several exercises a day, now. Almost constant, as Zbigniew had promised, although Charlie would simply like to go home. Now would be good, as Kuyber’s team stride like gods through the camp, and trainees scatter before them. Charlie is behind a prefab wall, clutching his gun and trying not to hyperventilate; he has no illusions why Kuyber’s saving his fire. He’s been avoiding Kuyber all morning, but doesn’t think he’ll be able to keep that up. Charlie is proved right as Kuyber rounds the corner, fires and misses – a high shot, too far right and easily evaded, but –

Charlie stumbles back, gasping; he can smell the acrid tang of live fire. Kuyber’s eyes are burning into his; distantly, Charlie registers running feet but knows they won’t be in time. He can’t seem to feel his legs, his hands, or anything but the heat of Kuyber’s hatred. He sees _the gun panning slightly to his right, past his panicked eyes, down and to the side at Joran’s desperate yell: “Live ammo! MOVE CHARLIE, HE’S GOT LIVE AMMUNITION –”_

Kuyber’s maddened snarl twisting his sharp face, the snake tattoo flaring along a bicep, his knuckles red and white around the gun. Sweat, fear, the smell of smoke; Charlie leaps left and dives into a roll, untucks only to see the snake writhe again as Kuyber brings his gun to bear. They both hear safetys going off as armbanded men in helmets and riot gear appear out of nowhere and scramble into positions. Everyone else is diving for cover in well-trained response.

Some deluded soul is barking orders through a megaphone but Kuyber’s well past human voices now. Charlie scrambles around a corner, the gun tracking his stumbling steps; his mind’s a fractured mess, fear shattering all the numbers. Then Charlie is almost thrown to the ground as a wild-eyed Joran breaks through the armbanded blockade to grab his elbow and run like hell. Kuyber swings, gun spitting, following them as they duck behind the armbands and scramble behind a bluff; the bullet clips the man beside Joran, high and right. The man spins with the force of impact, going down in an arc of blood.

The next bullet takes Kuyber through the shoulder and fells him to one knee; the medics surge one way while their instructors go the other. Charlie starts forward grimly only to be held back by Joran’s hand; he fights Joran off, again, only to be finally clamped still by one long arm across his chest. “Don’t be insane, man.” When Charlie turns back to glare, the medics are swearing and the man down is dead, bled out across the rock. Not someone Charlie knew; one of the Oslo teams, he thinks. Charlie’s not sure. Blood snakes across the dust and pools beneath the man’s neck; around him, shouts, chaos, and someone throwing up. Charlie looks back at Zbigniew Ollnytskiej, headed toward them and just holstering his Derringer, and nods. There really isn’t much to say.

He drops his tag (ID, civilian, plastic) in Zbigniew’s callused hand and heads off to pack, Joran shadowing his steps. They both walk past Kuyber without a glance.

* 

Kuyber stood trial in Sweden that year, but was released on a charge of insufficient evidence. Charlie knows he eventually settled into the EU military forces massing in Geneva, rising to paratrooper before suddenly disappearing off the map. In retrospect he should really have worried about that more, but around then his mother had taken her final turn for the worse. He and his father had spent an anguished week debating in whispers, more desperate each day, until Charlie couldn’t take it and vanished into his texts. It had been Alan who’d called Don home on Sunday. And then Charlie had had other things to count. Other things to ignore.

Right before Charlie had left for his gate, Joran had grabbed his shoulder, yanking him roughly aside out of airport traffic patterns. “Promise me, Charlie. He’ll walk – no one can say enough to condemn him without compromising the whole project. Promise me you’ll call if it starts again.” For years Charlie had thought himself strong enough to break his word.

*

“If I’ve got our boys figured right then your target’s within range. One floor up, middleish, yeah. Ah, shit. I can hear another motor – they’re sweeping back this way. Holly,” Joran’s voice, still thready, crackles into his headset, for once devoid of anything but deadly earnest. Charlie stops prying open the door, stomach cramping, bends his head. The timing couldn’t be worse. “I think they’ve really found me. Gonna try the breakout.” The clicks and snaps of Joran’s preparations filter easily through the earpiece; in the distance, Charlie hears a heavy-duty engine getting louder. “Your flare's sent, Hols. I’ll lead ‘em a chase, I will. Take good care, _mi frato_. Count hard.”

The earpiece goes dead. Charlie would swear, but he doesn’t know any words vile enough. He finishes loosening the door and takes a quick look.

A dense thick smoke has climbed to the ceiling and is already snaking across the floor, just as Joran promised. Everyone is now cut off from everyone else, as Charlie’s jammers do their work, gone straight into Mag’s radio frequency, his contribution to Joran’s specials. With those two things together Charlie has, at best, four minutes before Mag and her boys figure everything out. Right now, they’re expecting the LAPD, the FBI, or both at once. Not looking in his direction. 240 seconds: _Go_. Charlie slides the file back into a vest pocket, takes a fresh grip on his gun, and pushes open the newly-loosened door.

The smoke has billowed up 15 feet; the fans are on because Mag’s no fool, but the room still isn’t clearing. Joran does good work, and those floor-to-ceiling windows are actually doing Charlie a favor, diffracting the light through the smoke in an almost blinding white fire as he creeps forward. Unfortunately the thick smoke also restricts Charlie’s visibility to something like five feet, and the goon looms out of the murk too quickly to avoid. He must be security, huge like a Mack truck and kitted out in what looks like top-line gear and some serious artillery, but what Charlie’s mainly interested in is his stillness. It means he has something to guard.

_Damn._ The goon looks around when he shouldn’t and sees him – wrong shape, wrong vest, wrong size: even muffled in smoke Charlie’s the only person the goons wouldn’t recognize on sight. But he had known things might come to this when he stood in the garage’s half light and put the silencer back on his gun. _Damn, damn damn damn._ The man squints, then turns his head, opening his mouth to scream, rifle pointing vaguely at either Charlie or, perhaps, Alan – _the mission is paramount, yes?_ Zbigniew. Favorite class, the day after. _But the most important part of any rescue is to get your people out alive._ He’d shaken Joran’s hand. Charlie had led the applause.

Charlie raises the pistol, left hand steady under right. Lets his mind go blank.

*

It could have been dead center the first time, that day at the rifle ranges – and he’d thought he might be okay, had actually been fine till the smell of live fire and the smooth chill of metal near his face had kicked him back three years and then he’d recoiled, pulling the rifle out from true.

Don doesn’t know the real reason for the flinching, or how long Charlie debated facing the ranges again for the case. As if he couldn’t remember the purity of target and trajectory, or the feel of metal sliding through his sweaty palms. But Edgerton had had a point, if not for the reasons he supposed: Charlie’s training was small arms, not rifles. He’d had no idea how the larger gun pulled the entire arm out of alignment, but he already knew exactly how a steady left hand helped maintain the sniper’s precision. Had wanted to unknow it, forget it, pretend he’d never had to learn the weight of death by heart. Turns out he hasn’t forgotten much: gun-accuracy is a number still riveted into his wrist, still lined on his unwilling palm.

*

Blessed unbroken silence. In the swirling smoke Charlie steps around the sluggish pooling blood, bends down to scoop the much higher-powered rifle with its fancy scope, stows the silencer and reholsters his 9 mil. Doesn’t look. He had thought he wouldn’t shake, that his rage would make him steadier, but that doesn’t seem to be helping him stop. He has never been so grateful for smoke in his entire life. Especially since it’s unlikely Alan saw anything but a few random movements in the general whiteout, and Charlie can’t afford to think about anything else right now. _Target within range_ : it’s the last thing he heard from Joran before Joran dropped out. Now Charlie has no snoop and can’t see to assess any parameters. God only knows how Joran is faring, and against what. Charlie is currently an abject believer in good fortune. He heads toward his father’s last known location ( _middle_ ), tossing the coin in his mind. _Heads heads heads_. Shouts farther to his left; he’s counting seconds: _74, 73, 72_. Alan’s ravaged face emerges like a monument in the billowing confusion.

Instead of collapsing with relief, Charlie looks around (shouts still left and ahead) and kneels down. _53 seconds_. He cuts the plastic off his father’s arms, takes a few precious seconds to massage some blood back into chilled hands and feet, but can’t stop to do more than meet Alan’s eyes and raise a hand to his own lips before removing the gag. _Don’t._ His normally voluble father bites back fifteen different responses and concentrates instead on not stumbling over the bits of plastic, glass, ash and metal strewn across the floor. The smoke is still roiling but it’s starting to clear; Joran’s specials won’t last much longer. Charlie pulls his father further away from the windows (backlighting, very bad) and tries not to slow down for pity or love. _17 seconds. 6. 4 seconds over._ Then the door, glorious mercy under his hands, as a hoarse shout means Viti has finally found the dead guard.

They stumble down the stairs, Alan’s footsteps clattering next to Charlie’s rubbersoled tread. Charlie’s blocking each door as they go, solder and rope and a small cold arc, but he knows Mag will find a way through, given time. They’re in the stairwell, aiming for the atrium and Joran ASAP and they almost make it, but Charlie’s luck runs out first. He knows this because it’s Terence Kuyber standing guard at the bottom of the stairs. The glass atrium sends its attenuated sunlight back across the quiet, triumphant curl of his lip.

“Eppes. I knew I’d find you here.” Of course he’d known. Zbigniew had trained them both, after all. “It doesn’t take a _genius_.” The sneer widens to a crazy grin as Charlie brings the rifle up. Kuyber jumps backward, lithe in the glassy blue light.

Kuyber still moves like he was born to war, smooth and sleek across the wide pale marble. Charlie pushes Alan back behind the partition and moves a few steps out, past the ridiculous ornamental trees. This is going to be a real problem, could be a disaster, because Charlie’s always been good with numbers but Kuyber’s a wily tactician. Wily and motivated, in this case; Charlie’s rage and fear may not be enough. It should be Don in this vest, Joran blocking out escape routes, but they’re both MIA and Alan’s panting for air behind him. Charlie peers around the hedge of small potted trees, ducks a shower of debris and fires in return. _Game on._

There is no witty banter; neither of them have breath to spare. They trade fire and take cover, upending the potted trees, quick and sharp; Charlie knows he’s bleeding but he can still move. It’s all that matters, because Charlie’s got his hands full i) not dying and ii) keeping Kuyber from a clear shot at Alan. He has a long diagonal to cover and he can’t deviate from it; any open air means Kuyber’s got a shot, but the angle where the waterfall meets that marble overhang also means that Charlie can’t _see._

He takes cover beside the waterfall, blessing its long ostentatious marble slabs even as slivers ricochet across his arms. His return fire echoes harsh across the blue-shadowed floors; Kuyber ducks behind a giant fern. Charlie’s rifle cracks and Kuyber rolls away again, glass showering; this is taking far too long. In a few minutes even Viti will have figured out that there’s more than one way into the Atrium. This has to end, and it has to end right.

Charlie flicks blood off his brow and drops the rifle, sees a slight pucker chase across Kuyber’s face; even after three years Charlie still knows that _Whatinhell?_ when he sees it. It’s a good question. Charlie kicks his best weapon back toward Alan, then jumps out past the overhang and brings up his pistol, utterly sure. Kuyber’s manic rictus slips for the first time as he takes in what Charlie already knows: it’s a big room, but from here there are no bad angles. And with this gun in his hand Charlie’s a dead shot from 200 feet. He thumbs the safety, then realizes his father has gone completely still: Alan is holding his breath, terrified.

Charlie doesn’t stop. He can’t.

He is careful to take out Kuyber’s shooting arm first, sending a spatter of red through the wail of sirens in the dim glass-filtered light. Kuyber is scrambling backward now, red down his forearm and dripping onto the floor, gun spun out behind the _Ficus_ creeper as Charlie ignores his father’s gasp and braces his right wrist again. It won’t be the other arm. _The most important thing –_

The shot comes from behind Kuyber’s panicked face; same shoulder, different gunman, sending him reeling to the floor. His head hits marble with a definite crack amidst more showering glass as the FBI sniper lowers her rifle and the LAPD scrambles out of its wagons; Charlie can see a swarm of yellow-printed Kevlar from the corner of his eye as he moves in. Kuyber seems like he’s out for the count, bleeding and still, but Charlie doesn’t consider lowering the gun.

And now Charlie knows he’s not sane, because the only reason he doesn’t just shoot is Alan, now audibly rasping both pleas and denials from the ravaged floor behind him. It’s his father’s voice, and only his father’s voice, that brings Charlie back from red-hazed rage to something resembling humanity. Terence Kuyber is still somebody’s son, could be somebody’s brother. Charlie eases his finger off the trigger as the Feds pour into the atrium.

And then, unbelievably, it’s Don’s voice cutting across the spray of blood and soil and glass and horror and crushing fatigue: “Lower your weapons! FBI!” And Charlie does not believe in luck but the last half hour has taught him to fear far, far too many things. Thankfully, he steps back toward their father, puts his gun down on the shards of glass and raises his hands, unable to stop their tremor. In this moment, his brother’s voice is every happy ending Charlie’s ever known.

*

That suddenly, it’s over. The federal agents are a dark sea of tac vests and riot helmets; Charlie sinks down, lets them roil over him and eddy him out to the parking lot. The FBI picked up Joran on the sweep in; he’s bleeding in a few places and broken in others, but somehow still manages to hobble over to Charlie and raise a hand to grip his arm. When Charlie recovers, the LAPD have broken through the doors to bring down the goons; it takes three to deal with Viti, who’s still struggling as he’s loaded into the van. Four handcuffed goons and one bodybag leave almost all accounted for; there are no signs of Mag but she was always the smart one.

Kuyber is still out for the count. Charlie’s rooting for intensive psychotherapy and permanent damage to the shoulder. _May he never hold a gun again._

Alan is sitting quietly between Colby and Don, who has one arm around his father and doesn’t look like he’s moving it anytime soon. The paramedics are checking Alan’s wrists, hands, head and ankles; they’re also surreptitiously examining his heart rate and blood pressure. Alan is currently waving them off with the edge of his blanket, looking irritated, which is comforting. Don, on the other hand, looks like he hasn’t slept in days, wrinkled and furrowed and almost as white as Alan. In the atrium Don had turned away, chivvying his gape-mouthed team, barking demands for paramedics and cleanup and bomb sweeps, disappearing completely into the mission as if it wasn’t his little brother in the fireproof pants and someone else’s Kevlar vest. Only Charlie saw the pain shock through Don first, as he stared at Charlie standing before their shaking father on a rime of glass, blood running into his eyes, Kuyber’s blood mixed with marble dust and smeared along the floor.

Charlie is supposed to be keeping Joran from going into shock but he’s having enough trouble stopping himself from sliding to the ground in a heap. Without the truck they’re both dazedly leaning on Charlie knows he’d have trouble standing; he can’t stop shivering and his legs don’t work. Joran’s shoulder and arm are neatly bound to his side with someone else’s field dressings; Charlie may or may not have been there for that part. He can’t remember.

He wants, desperately, with all his soul, to be six years old so he can fling himself across fifteen feet of parking lot, bury his head in his father’s arms and cry for hours. _A man is dead and I killed him to get to you and I’m not sorry._ As for what Don must think, well. His father got kidnapped because of his work, and TechSec got hold of it because Charlie left a file out on his desk and his door unlocked. Terence Kuyber may or may not have been Charlie’s fault, but the tac teams standing around with nothing to do make Charlie the Eppes brother who’s been lying to Don for the past five years. Again. Don would be the Eppes brother corralled just over the Michigan border for over four days by suspicious webs of red tape, mired in legislation and sinking fast till Terry and David dug him out.

So really, Don would be the Eppes brother immobilized while the former leaders of SynTel used Hamilton TechSec to rip apart his entire family.

They may not have failed. Charlie turns his head so he can’t see his brother’s face.

*

“So when were you going to tell me, huh,” Don asks casually, suddenly framed in the door. “About how you were field-trained by the NSA. _Charlie._ ” There’s a wealth of bitterness in those last two syllables, small resonances twanging everywhere; Charlie looks up, aghast in a haze of variables.

He’s got his new new-work folder open on his desk, papers and post-its spread haphazardly out across riotous stacks of student grading. The Bureau files are now hidden in his lab, not allowed out unless the doors are locked; the math on the board is only research-related. An empty hallway yaws beyond his brother’s slim form; most of CalSci is out enjoying what’s left of the mild afternoon. Even Larry is long gone by now, off to buff his Model A to a softly polished sheen. The late light halos the sharp lines of Don’s suit and lingers on his hair but does nothing to soften his mouth.

It’s been over a month since Don got back from Michigan; he still sends David and Colby to consult with Charlie at CalSci but hasn’t stopped by himself. The other two treat him like some fragile god, but – and Charlie knows this is Don – they don’t ask. Megan, the first time Charlie came by the Bureau, had only looked at him and touched his head, gently, where the glass off the second shot had caught him. He’d had to leave the room. Don hadn’t looked up.

Dinners at the house happen every night and are all about coddling Alan, who still breaks down at odd and unpredictable moments. Charlie keeps his movements slow and gentle, lets Don handle the knives. Talks about school. He knows he’s lost weight but, despite his father’s worried eyes, can’t always bring himself to eat.

Charlie doesn’t talk about waking up gasping because he can’t breathe through the blood. Each day he fails to convince himself that Don no longer speaks to him because they’re both too busy trying to make their father smile. It’s a more effective rebuke than any wrestling match, but Charlie’s never known how to make up for being good at what he does.

He’s had other nightmares, almost as bad, about this moment since the mop-up and the hospital and the warrants for arrest. Don had sat through the entire debrief, polished and remote and about as related to Charlie as he was to his chair, his expression closed-neutral. It was the blank shield Charlie had seen held up at various lows: Don right after the breakup with Terry, Don halfway through his second run at the Cliff Howard case. Don at their mother’s bedside in those last few terrible months. Then, his face had warmed whenever she’d opened her eyes. Now, Charlie doesn’t know who can bring his brother back.

The only time Don’s poise had wavered was when Charlie got to Kuyber. Halfway through his description of the glass shattering around his second miss, Charlie had caught the edge off the glitter in his brother’s eyes. He’d suddenly forgotten how to talk without screaming. Charlie had finished his report with eyes firmly on the back wall.

“The _Nevada camp_ , Charlie. God.” Don’s still leaning in the doorway, deceptively still, tension strung through his shoulders and tightening his hand on the frame. Charlie wishes for superpowers: teleportation, perhaps. Or time travel. He’s had the department debugged, but installed a white-noise generator in his office and EM field disruptors in the lab. Larry’s idea, Amita’s design, both of them white to the lips. Charlie hadn’t argued. And Don’s still waiting. As Charlie watches, one of Don’s hands floats off the door frame up to rub tiredly at his forehead. It comes as a shock to realize he’s not the only one losing sleep or color around here; Don looks like hell.

“Is Dad the only one still eating food around here, Donnie?” It just falls out of his mouth, all unexpected, their mother’s accent and intonation precisely conserved. Although that rebuke was more generally applied to Charlie. Had been. His brother shoots him a sizzling glare.

“I wouldn’t talk there, Invisible Man.” Another one of her expressions, applied liberally to both of them in their winter pallor, and it may be spring now but Charlie saw himself in the mirror this morning. “Invisible codebreaking agent man. Huh, Charlie?” His mouth snaps shut. The way Don says it, that line isn’t funny at all.

It had been David and Colby, working long-distance with the Michigan Bureau and Terry Lake in DC, who’d sprung Don on Wednesday morning out of a small cramped room and the clutches of five strangely determined Michigan border officials, all of whom melted into the trees at the first sign of FBI Kevlar. It had been Megan who’d bravely told Don that Charlie had somehow given two fully trained FBI agents the slip early that afternoon. But it was Larry who’d handed Don the real break in the case: a hurried definition of reciprocals and a small blue-skied photo, both of them in the garage staring at the open locker, with its D-rings and gun oil.

Joran’s flare – a coded call with names, times, and locations broadcast across all known Bureau frequencies – had gone up about half an hour after that. At this point it had been 33 hours since Don had seen a pillow but he’d refused to hear any arguments against his going out: “That is my family and this is my job and Sinclair if you threaten me again you are _done_ , you hear me?” Megan had eased Don’s right hand away from his hip, and Larry, who’d tagged along to the Bureau office, had done a surprisingly good job of talking Don off the ceiling. Months from now, David would trace that initial phone call to Viti’s cell, across three continents and several satellites.

“They kicked me off that case, you know,” Charlie says finally. “The NSA. Well, or I walked, take your pick. I was a liability in the field.” It’s still true, and Joran can thank Lister for some very solid extended benefits. Charlie has a ticket that puts him at Heathrow in eight days, to visit, although MI-5 will likely be cannibalizing any scraps of self-worth the NSA somehow left unconsumed. That had been the next debrief, after the FBI filed out, Don not even glancing his way. Losing all his consulting contracts would be tough, and it might still happen, but Charlie doesn’t regret giving up future field privileges. He’d refused the initial training outright, actually, and protested the next year until the NSA threatened to take away his clearance entirely, but Don doesn’t have to hear about that right now. Wouldn’t have the time, anyway, not with how he’s pacing and yelling, throwing out his hands in exasperated punctuation. Ah. At last. Charlie sits quietly, mouth and stomach cramping into something like oblivion as he prepares to endure the onslaught.

Don is accurately, ruthlessly horrible, gutting each scenario at TechSec in a controlled snarl, pointing out with furious precision every single flaw, all the moments Charlie’s plan could have gone completely awry. It goes on for some time. It gets worse around Kuyber. Don’s not even able to speak when he gets to Charlie tossing the rifle. But for every incandescent _Who the hell gave you the right_ Charlie hears _What the hell would I have done if neither one of you made it back?_ He’d known Don would start with the first question. He doesn’t know if Don will make it to the last, but this wouldn’t the first time they’ve underestimated each other. It’d be funny if it weren’t so mutually incriminating.

The sun is noticeably westering when Don finally throws himself down into the student chair across from Charlie’s desk. This is the closest he’s come to Charlie since that pre-Michigan phone call; they haven’t even done the dishes together this month. Nothing to talk about. And he’s been hollering the last few questions, but now Don just leans back, unstrung. Says, tiredly, “Why, Charlie? Why didn’t you _tell_ me?” Why didn’t you tell _me_ , Charlie’s brain parses effortlessly. As if it’s been killing Don for weeks, which of course it has. As if he knows, but can’t help asking.

Charlie gets that. So he watches his hands, folded and still on the desk, as he tells Don about the kill codes, about Awasi and Zbigniew , about Coombs and Taniyama and Lung and Bok, about the maps and guns, the classes and quizzes. About the lust for numbers and the snake in the desert. About Joran, who’d saved his life. And one more thing, because a brother deserves the truth, the thing Charlie had figured out while looking down at someone else’s blood pooling stickily on red Nevada rock.

“I didn’t – I knew then why you never wanted me here – at the Bureau, in the Service.” The next part is the hardest thing he’s ever said. “And I know it’s because you wanted to – to take care of us, to keep me safe.” Don’s charge, family law; laid by their mother when they were both small. Don’s nodding, reluctantly, and Charlie is a _wuss_. “Because you love me.” Don freezes. There’s a pause, which is bad, but Charlie can’t find breath to break it. Has to look up at his brother, has to know if it’s still true.

Don bows his head, blinking, like it’s suddenly too heavy to hold up. Charlie inhales, carefully, and forces himself to keep going; this part matters too. “So I – well. Opted out at the end of training – refused further activation, got kicked off the contract, went back to CalSci. Brought Larry back a new shirt, got Amita her own clearance. And I never said, not to anyone.” He takes a shivering breath; his hands have fisted up, despite his best efforts. Charlie unfolds one and holds it out to Don, for emphasis, for help. It’s shaking, a little. “Don. Don, I’m so sorry. I couldn’t – I wouldn’t ever have done it, ever, but –” his brother grabs his hand, a convulsive move; Charlie stops.

And they’re silent. Don turns Charlie’s hand palm-up, gently, finds the callus on fingers and palm and thumb; between golf games with their father Charlie’s taken to going out to the private ranges, building his accuracy back up. His brother looks down, mouth thin and unhappy; around them the sun leaches everything to shade and fire. Charlie opens his mouth and nothing comes out but it’s okay, because Don lays his face down wearily on his baby brother’s gun hand and he’s not crying. He’s not crying.

The office door is still open, which is what got them all in trouble in the first place, but hell with it. This part isn’t news. Charlie pushes Euclid out of the way and wraps himself around his brother, their arms in this moment the only circumference he needs.

 

***


End file.
